Soft Halyard or Line Shackle

[Anton B]

Yahooo! I did some more (oh, lord how much time do I have in it now?) looking around and found someone doing very much what I am about to do: use Amsteel for shrouds and forestay. A couple of people recommend against it because of constructional stretch and rebound, making it hard to rig and de-rig, but another says that he had minimal trouble, and said the same thing that I am imagining, which is that the boat is flexible (Prindle 19 catamaran) and that after using it for a while, I will be familiar with which diamond knot it needs to be set up to, I'll just rig it up at one setting and let is sit while I get on the wetsuit, put away the truck, etc., at which point, I put it into its final position. I figure I will have a large number of extra diamond knots to be able to account for a large variation in length. So I am now fully confident that it will at least work and be safe, though it might be more trouble than the SS rigging. Should not have problems with creep, it will not be rigged up too tight, and I got SK-78, which is the low creep Amsteel. Also, if I leave it rigged up, I can back it off one or two knots.

"The one thing I would say is that all woven dyneema products will have an initial mechanical creep associated with the construction and splices. Don't be suprised to take 100mm out of a 6m stay over the first couple of sails. once this is done it will be rock solid. The amount of time that a racing dinghy is tensioned up is negligible in the context of visco-elastic creep.
If you take the mast down and put it up again, the stay will recover some of that mechanical creep again, so will appear shorter on rerigging, but that beds back in quickly."

See here if interested:

http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/for...=11036&TPN=999

And here:

http://www.catsailor.com/forums/ubbt...t&Number=32225

On another note, this picture here shows a cascading deadeye adjustment/tightening system, and I had a brilliant thought!



I could use the idea that Essington posted a picture of to use as the anchor for the top part of the cascade system! One could use the deadeyes with a top pulley with a jam cleat to allow easy on the fly adjustment!

The thing that Essington posted is like the adjustable part of a whoopee sling, and according to another 18 hours on internet research (!) the likely strength reduction would be only 20%,and that is only where and if the tail end exits; it breaks like a badly done taper. If you just sleeve the line over the other one to have tail hanging off, it should not affect the strength of the main line, just the add-on, which, if it's only holding the low tension part of your cascade, should be way more than adequate.

Will have to test. Might use that system to make adjustable trapeze lines too....

Anton